[center][h2]Outside the Chapel[/h2] [h3](Abigail and Ellen: A Collab between Stitches and Pascal)[/h3][/center] Abigail was the first and fastest to leave. She was quick on the mark standing up, and quicker still with her unsteady canter towards the door - using her body weight, meagre as it was, to swing it open as she lurched haphazardly into the corridor outside. Ellen wasn't surprised by the girl's eagerness to run. She remembered a similar event when she was younger-- confronted with having to talk about her feelings and the events that had transpired made her feel like she had to justify her feelings… and even more, that she was expected to apologize for them. She had felt so betrayed, so bitter, and so utterly alone. Ellen probably would have stayed behind and chatted for a bit with the people there, had Abi not run off and reminded her of her younger self. "Excuse me, nice meeting you all!" Ellen called out as she hopped up. "Abi, hey, wait up!" Ellen called out, picking up her pace to catch up with Abi. The girl froze and went through a variety of expressions before swinging around to Ellen, picking a wary frown to wear on her face as she approached. "Hey Abi, I just wanted to apologize for earlier, calling you out like that was rude." Ellen still wanted to say that Abi didn't look good, but she felt like that would be undoing her attempt at an apology, so she waited. "You okay?" There was a pause. It looked like she was parsing the information and churning through a handful of thoughts all fighting to come out of her mouth at once. She eventually decided upon "it's okay. You didn't know," and after a moment longer, she nodded. "I'm fine." Ellen sincerely doubted she was fine, but would pressing right now help? "Cool. So what are you up to now?" Ellen asked, continuing to walk alongside the other girl. Besides, it wasn't like she had anything better to do. "I'm uh," Abigail wiped her face with her healthy hand, "I'm waitin' on those two to get outta the...chapel." There was a slight emphasis on the final word and no small amount of scepticism. "Brooks don't like the fact I ain't sleepin', so he's taking 'decisive action' - whatever that means." “You aren’t sleeping?” Ellen didn’t know before--how could she have, really? Though, that did explain some of Abi’s current appearance. Lack of sleep could really mess with the body and mind. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is it nightmares or insomnia?” Ellen had a little experience with nightmares, and hell, when she started trying to sleep on boats she got a little experience with insomnia. She used to get horribly seasick every time she tried to sleep on a boat. In the back of her mind, the idea began to form that it was perhaps something more than just a… mundane sleep issue. It couldn’t be so simple as her just feeling unsafe and restless, right? "It's neither. I can't-...it ain't so simple, I'm endangering everybody if I go to sleep, for reasons I ain't sure I'm allowed to tell you," Abigail rubbed the back of her neck, scuffing her foot on the tiles. Then she seemed to clock on to how she sounded and was hasty to recover. "It ain't cause I'm gonna blow up or nothin', either!" She held her hands up in self defense. "The sleeping bag, that was, it's an isolated incident! I'd even go ahead n' say it was intentional, in a way!" Ellen wasn't sure if these things were secret because Goodnight wanted them so, or secret because Abigail wanted them so, but she simply shrugged and moved on, chuckling as Abigail brought up some sleeping bag destruction. "Ahh, I see. Well it sucks that you aren't sleeping." She looked back at the chapel. "But I'm glad someone is going to help you out. Is Brooks someone you knew, before?" She asked. They seemed… cut from the same cloth, in a way. "Nah I never met him," Abigail dismissed the claim with indifference. "He just...he gets it, y'know?" She glanced back at the chapel door. "He gets it in a way I don't think nobody 'cept for folk who lived the way I do would get it." Ellen blinked. She clearly didn't get it. But she didn't grow up similar to how Abigail did. If they learned nothing else from the "therapy," they learned that. The good thing was that Abigail had a person who she seemed to get along with. Maybe Abigail didn't need someone like her around. "Well, I'll just wait with you for a few if that's alright." She offered. Abigail glanced up at Ellen with a brief look of bewilderment. She mulled it over for a few moments before the first, genuine smile flashed on her exhausted face. "Sure." They weren't kept waiting for long. Audrey and Brooks walked briskly from the chapel next, in hushed conversation. Ellen and Abigail caught the tail end of what Audrey was saying ("-pletely reasonable to have them do that. All I'm saying is approach it carefully. After all, it can't go any more wrong than it already did, right?") as she patted Brooks on the shoulder twice and paced right past them without so much as a nod of acknowledgement. A more alert Abigail might have been suspicious but the kid drawled "what's all this about 'decisive action', huh?" As Brooks approached. "It means exactly that. You're worried about sleep; I'm acting on it." "But [I]how[/I]?" Abi whinged with impatience. "I'm going to keep an eye on you while you sleep." "Hot." "That way you ain't as likely to get stressed out and paranoid. I'm afraid that means I'm going to be in your personal space, Ellen. Along with the rest of your group." The bootlegger turned his attention to the other woman, clasping one hand by the wrist in front of him as he stared down at her. Ellen looked at Brooks as he explained he would be in their sleeping quarters. It was the most she had heard him talk, but she wasn't surprised that he chose to talk about Abigail over anything else. "Doesn't matter to me." Ellen replied. "I'm used to sleeping on demand." She didn't much mind the larger communal sleeping area. The sleeping bags were just as comfortable as her beds on the boats had been, and it was honestly just as loud here as there. "As long as you don't climb into my sleeping bag, we'll be fine." She chuckled. Ellen wasn't the pickiest woman in the world, but she did have a type-- and Brooks wasn't it. She looked over to Abigail, raising her brows. "You good with this plan?" She asked. "I mean, yeah, but it's not gonna do much to-" "Good," Brooks interjected as he brought his hands down to his sides and started to move. "I'll see you both this evening." He nodded once and left. Abigail watched him go. "I sure hope that don't bite me in the ass down the line somehow," the kid mused to herself. She was just as quick to forget about it and grinned up at Ellen. "Let's get in the queue for the washrooms, otherwise we're gonna be stuck waitin' fer hours."